Shine Bug

Shine Bug is a critter found in the Temperate Biome. They emit light without creating heat, and provide a small decor bonus. They can be domesticated, and produce Shine Nymph Eggs when captive.

Behavior
Shine Bugs are relatively rare, with two or three spawning in the temperate biome. They are commonly found in places with lots of Mealwood, Bristle Blossoms, Bluff Briar and Muckroots. They are quick lived, but reproduce slowly when wild if unable to find Bristle Berry to consume. They can drown in water and can be killed by being entombed or by attacking them.

Shine Bugs are quite lonely critters, as only a few exist in the meteoroid, so they constantly seek each other, and sometimes mistake duplicant-made lighting as new friends, bobbing up and down in greeting. They are, however, attracted to things emitting light, and are more likely to move towards things such as lamps, light bulbs, or other shine bugs. Shine bugs will consume any Gristle Berry or Bristle Berry that is found lying around. They seem oblivious to the atmosphere in which they're kept, although temperature extremes will prove lethal to them.

Variants
Shine bugs enjoy the largest array of variants that can be unlocked through Ranching, each variant requiring a different foodstuff and providing a progressively increased benefit. They must be raised successively, with each generation providing a chance to produce the next when provided with the correct foodstuff.

They are as follows:

Shine Bug
→ →

The original variant consumes Bristle Berry, Gristle Berry and Phosphorite. They provide illumination and moderately improve decor (+30) in a modest 5 tile radius. They are short lived, but reproduce quickly with a 67% per cycle reproduction rate when tamed and fed. If fed Gristle Berry, they have an increased chance of producing Sun Nymph eggs.

Shine Bugs emit light at 1800 Lux while uncrowded.

Sun Bug
→ →

The second possible variant, Sun Bug are orange in coloration and continue providing illumination and a high decor bonus (+50), as well as increase its radius to 7 tiles. They eat Fried Mushroom, Gristle Berry, Mushroom and Phosphorite. If fed Fried Mushroom, they have an increased chance of producing Royal Nymph Eggs.

Sun Bugs emit light at 1800 Lux while uncrowded.

Royal Bug
→ →

The third variant, Royal bugs are a royal purple and provide the same decor bonus as Sun Bug. They eat Fried Mushroom, Gristle Berry, Pepper Bread, Phosphorite and Pincha Peppernut. If fed Pepper Bread, they have an increased chance of producing Coral Nymph Eggs.

Coral Bug
→ →

The fourth variant, Coral Bugs are a pink hue and provide the same decor value and radius as Royal Bug. They eat Bristle Berry, Fried Mushroom, Gristle Berry, Pepper Bread, Phosphorite and Stuffed Berry. If fed Stuffed Berry they have an increased chance of producing Azure Nymph Eggs.

Azure Bug
→ →

The fifth variant, Azure Bugs are a dark blue hue and the same decor value and radius as the Coral Bug. They eat Pepper Bread, Phosphorite, Phosphorus and Stuffed Berry. If fed Phosphorus, they have an increased chance of producing Abyss Nymph eggs.

Abyss Bug
→ →

The sixth variant, Abyss Bugs are a translucent black hue. They have a very high decor value (+80) with a 7 tile radius, but no longer produce light, which by itself would provide a decor value of +15. They live considerably longer than previous variants, tripling their lifespan to 75 cycles, but also greatly reduce their reproductive rate to 22% per cycle. This means that Abyss Bugs (and Radiant Bugs) will not be able to lay an egg before they die of starvation, if tame but not fed. They eat Abyssalite, Barbeque, Meat, Phosphorus and Stuffed Berry. If fed Barbeque, they have an increased chance to produce Radiant Nymph eggs.

Radiant Bug
→ →

The seventh and final variant, Radiant Bugs are colorlessly translucent. They have an astoundingly high decor value (+200) with a 8 tile radius, produce light with a 5 tile radius, and keep the extended life and reduced reproduction rates of the Abyss Bug. They eat Barbeque and Diamond. They will almost always produce more Radiant Nymph eggs, with a tiny chance to produce an original Shine Nymph Egg.

Ionizing Bug
→ →

Shine Bug Decor Farming
This method is intended to utilize the Radiant Bugs insane decor bonus and free light, with any extra egg production being an added bonus. Your ranch should typically be sandwiched between rooms that would benefit most from the high decor and light (mess hall, lavatory, rec room, etc.) and should be as narrow as possible. The roof and floor should be made of Window Tile, which decor and light penetrate. You should locate a light bulb on one side of the room, and a feeder on the other. The shine bugs will travel between the feeder and light bulb, following their natural inclinations, and provide a fairly consistent source of illumination and decor bonus in doing so. This can relieve a massive amount of the decor related stress dupes face. Alternatively, locating your ranch next to a large source of decor penalty (such as Heavi-Watt Wire) can nullify the penalty altogether, allowing dupes to function normally in such areas.

You can take advantage of the fact that variants between Sun and Azure bugs (included) provide the exact same decor benefit and go arbitrarily high on the variant chain in the dedicated breeding room, then set up a critter drop-off for shine bugs outside of any room but still somewhere in your base, as well as a critter feeder filled with Phosphorite and allowing your preferred types, thus getting a high amount of sources of decor to roam everywhere around your base. They need to be tame so that they don't leave the corridor and get stuck in a low traffic area, inhospitable climate, or a mushroom farm where their presence is harmful.

Note this setting up does not apply to barracks and bed rooms as the light will disturb Duplicants' sleep. However, since the abyss bug variant does not produce light, they can be effectively used to boost decor during sleeping quarters. Because of this, it may be worthwhile to keep an abyss bug stable as well as a radiant bug stable around so that the abyss bugs can be used to boost decor in rooms that must be kept dark.

Radiant Bug Breeding
Feeding all shine bug variants (with the exception of the abyss bug and radiant bug variants) phosphorite will always provide a 2% chance to produce an egg of the next shine bug variant. Thanks to the shine bug's extremely fast reproduction speed (2 eggs every 3 cycles), radiant bug variants can be ranched reasonably quickly off just a diet of phosphorite (50 eggs, a ranch of 8 will produce these in just over 9 cycles). Care must be taken to quickly clear stables of eggs to prevent the cramped debuff from slowing down egg production. In this way, the abyss and radiant bug variants can be bred in about 40 cycles. It is still much faster to feed the variants the specialized diet, as it allows you to skip breeding a shine bug variant entirely as their egg chance rises to above 90% after just two or three meals.

Once the abyss bug variant is bred, it is recommend to keep a separate stable of abyss bugs fed off a diet of abyssalite before moving on the radiant bug variant. Since the goal is most likely decor farming, the abyss bug's lack of light production makes it useful for boosting decor in rooms that must be kept dark, such as bedrooms and mushroom farms.

Note, once the radiant bug variant is bred, it is extremely expensive to feed them off a diet of barbeque. 1 kg of barbeque is 4,000 kcals. This means one radiant bug consumes as much food as four duplicants! It is highly recommended to have a small stockpile of diamond (obtained from the oil biome) before creating a ranch of radiant bugs. 1 ton of diamond will feed a ranch of 8 radiant bugs for 125 cycles. If diamond is not available or in extremely short supply, then it is recommended to pair the radiant bug stable with a Shove Vole ranch to sustain the necessary supply of barbeque. A stable of 9 shove voles combined with a drowning chamber will keep a stable of 8 radiant bugs fed.

Another downside of feeding radiant bugs off barbeque is that it will occupy an electric grill, taking away time that could be spent making other food. Remember, 8 radiant bugs consumes as much barbeque as 32 duplicants!

When feeding abyss or radiant bugs barbeque, it is highly recommend to set the critter feeder storage to 8 kg or lower to minimize the amount of barbeque that spoils, and to raise to priority to keep it stocked. This is not necessary if the stable is kept in a sterile environment, of course.

An abyss bug will only need to be fed barbeque a small number of times to produce the radiant bug variant. Once radiant bugs are hatched, immediately stop feeding any abyss bugs barbeque as at that point it is a waste of food. The seed group of abyss bugs will retain their radiant bug egg lay chance when fed abyssalite, and as such can produce cheap radiant bug eggs until the end of their life. Because of this, a cheap way to produce many radiant bugs is using seed groups of abyss bugs. A second stable of abyss bugs can be created so that the abyss bugs are briefly fed barbeque to get their radiant bug egg lay chance up, and once their egg lay chances are sufficiently high, to switch their diet to abyssalite. The abyss bugs that die in this radiant seed stable can be replaced by the eggs produced by the other dedicated abyss bug stable. The resultant radiant bug eggs can be incubated and distributed around the base. However, these radiant bugs will most likely starve before they reproduce, so new radiant bugs will need to be produced to replace them. As such, this method, while cheaper, requires more user intervention (periodically refreshing the abyss bug seed group). The user would have to repopulate the seed stable every 75 cycles and closely monitor the stable until the abyss bugs are laying mostly radiant bug eggs. Additionally, although this may not have too much of an impact, the user also loses out on the massive decor provided by a dedicated radiant bug stable. If there is sufficient diamond on the map (spare 10 tons), or if a steady stream of barbeque can be guaranteed, then the extra effort and loss of decor may not justify the cost savings.

Despite their immense resource investment, radiant bugs and abyss bugs provide an excellent return, as abyss bugs can greatly boost decor in bedrooms, and radiant bugs can greatly boost decor everywhere, cancelling out even the decor malus from heavi-watt wire.

For reference, the decor boost from ranching radiant bugs and distributing them around base give rooms a decor bonus of 2,000 - 3,000. This is so high that a duplicant only needs to spend two or three scheduling blocks in such a room and have an average cycle decor of over 120 even if they spend the rest of their time inside a power sauna or around other industrial machinery whose average decor is around negative 400.

Once Radiant Bugs are bred and their distribution areas surrounded by window tile, there is utterly no reason to invest in any other form of decor aside from room requirements.

Care must be taken when distributing radiant bugs in kitchen areas, some hungry radiant bugs may steal your dupes' freshly grilled barbeque if it is not stored quickly enough. On the plus side, if this happens, the radiant bug will live long enough to reproduce once as long as it is not cramped or overcrowded.

In certain cases, when large amounts of critters are ranched (for example, having half a dozen stables of slicksters to recycle carbon dioxide), excessive amounts of meat and barbeque are produced and can potentially cause problems with storage space, or spoiling and causing other problems. In this case, radiant bugs may prove useful for clearing away 3,000,000 kcals of barbeque to prevent food spoilage issues.

Ironically enough, the decor boost from the radiant bugs can help boost duplicants' morale sufficiently enough so that they can subsist on lower tier foods without becoming stressed, freeing up additional barbeque.

Radiant bugs are unsuitable for Shine Bug reactor farming; it is recommended to use the sun variant for this purpose.

Medicine Herding
The goal of this setting up is to produce Sun Nymph Eggs with Sun Bugs. Sun Nymph Egg can be used to make Serum Vial, which cures Zombie Spores.

Shine Bug Reactor Farming
This method uses Shine Bugs as a virtually unlimited solar power source. It relies on the fact that Shine Bugs have a high reproduction rate, that their light can power a Solar Panel, and the fact that wild critters will not believe they are in a confined space even if they are confined with a Liquid Airlock to a 1x1 tile, as liquid airlocks do not register as walls of a room.

Create a 3*3 box of Window Tiles, sealing one of the sides with a liquid airlock and the top with a pneumatic door. Solar panels can then be placed below and to the sides of this box, and a conveyor chute can drop eggs into the box through the pneumatic door. A standard Phosphorite or other duplicant tended Shine Bug farm can then be used to seed this box with Shine Bugs. Once seeded, the Shine Bugs will continue to reproduce as quickly as they die off, as their 7% reproduction rate allows them to reproduce once before they starve.

The box can continue to be seeded until the room containing the reactor reaches its critter limit, or the solar panels reach their maximum capacity (50-100 Shine Bugs will max out a Solar Panel depending on whether it is beside or below the reactor), at which point another reactor can be built.

Note that once filled, the overlapping light of the Shine Bugs will render their light radius pure white, producing a sort of artificial sun. This can make it difficult to see or edit the reactor. The number of Shine Bugs however, can be read using the decor overlay.

Since this method simply uses a farm's extra eggs, it can easily be coupled with other techniques for gaining benefit from Shine Bugs.

Gallery
Светлячок